A fairly recent development in my life is that I now love carrot cake. As I child, I used to think it was weird and not like the tangy cream-cheese icing that accompanied it but my tastebuds have since evolved. My favorite SLC local ice cream place, Normal, makes an unbelievably delicious carrot cake composed cone that makes me swoon. The last time they had the carrot cake composed cone as an option. (with salted vanilla bean ice cream, carrot cake chunks, cream-cheese icing, and candied pecans) I ordered it an unhealthy amount of times. One time I even ordered a kids size, went and did some shopping around Trolley Square and came back and ordered a normal size because it was so good. I cannot begin to explain how much I love that ice cream cone. I was waiting so patiently for them to bring it back to their menu, which they finally did! Unfortunately, I was thousands of miles away at school and could not eat the delightful cold dessert.
So, I decided to make something carrot cake-y, and I also had a hankering for cinnamon rolls. Et voila! Using a recipe from Tastes of Lizzy T, carrot cake cinnamon rolls were born. I used fresh grated carrots that I painstakingly grated on a microplane while I facetimed my mom (multi-tasking is a must for me when I’m busy and have to do a repetitive easy motor task), pie spice, freshly grated nutmeg, and pecans. To make a more cinnabon-esque roll, Lizzy T recommends pouring cold heavy cream over the rolls before baking, to give them more fat and moisture.
Rolling the dough out posed a bit of an issue since I was not about to roll it out on the floor of my dorm room, the dorm kitchen has so much grime I am afraid to set anything down I don’t want to become bacteria-fied, and my dorm desk has possibly never been properly disinfected. So, I used what I knew was clean, a nice big baking sheet. I floured it liberally, smooshed/rolled the dough into its shape, spread on the cinnamon-pie spice-nutmeg-sugar-butter mixture, rolled it into a log, and cut up each piece.
I baked the rolls, whipped up some cream cheese frosting, and sent the word out to my friends to come and sample the cinnamon rolls. It was a huge success, they were wonderfully moist and tender from the addition of the carrots, delectably spiced, nicely sweet and tangy from the cream cheese, and crunchy and nutty from the pecans. Delicious!
